The majority of Vienna's Jewish population was deported during 1942 in transports that took them to the killing sites of Eastern Europe and to the Theresienstadt ghetto. Several transports departed from the city between 1943 and 1944 taking deportees to the east. Most of these transports carried relatively few Jewish deportees because, by this time, the Jewish population of Vienna (Wien) was very small.
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Transport No. 47a left Vienna (Wien) on March 3rd, 1943, destined for Auschwitz-Birkenau, where it arrived on March 5th. It consisted of 75 Jews.

Due to the lack of existing archival records, the exact identity of the deportees is unclear. It is possible that these were Viennese Jews who were deported in accordance with the new decrees issued by the RSHA (Reich Security main Office) on February 20, 1943. However they might as well have been Jews of foreign nationality who were caught trying to cross the border to flee Nazi Germany.

Police officer Johann Bender and three armed policemen from the Schutzpolizei guarded the Jews throughout the journey. They reported at the post ramp of the Viennese Nordbahnhof (Northern Rail Station) at 6 AM. SS-Obersturmführer Ernst Girzick led the Jews to the train station. Due to the small number of deportees, they were forced into a special car attached to a regular passenger train.

The transport was listed in the camp records as “collective transport” (Sammeltransport), which usually indicated that it included Jews from several cities in the German Reich. Following its arrival, the SS men carried out a selection. Some of the Jews were sent to the camp, the others were immediately murdered in the gas chambers.
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